When Junior Comes Home With A Bloody Nose

Is It A One-time Scrap Or A More Serious Problem? Helping Your Child Handle Aggression Isn't Easy.

May 10, 1993|By Lawrence Kutner New York Times

What should you do if your child comes home with scraped knuckles and a bloody nose, obviously results of a fistfight? Does it matter if your child threw the first punch? What if your child claims to have been standing up for your own good name or defending a friend who was being picked on? What if your child is a girl? In our culture, we give children, especially boys, mixed messages about fighting. We both abhor and revere violence.

''Our culture has been built on aggression,'' said Arthur Horne, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of Georgia, who works with children referred by the local courts. ''Our movies send the message to children that we don't believe that we can resolve things nonviolently.''

Many of the movies and television programs children watch present physical aggression as a preferred first response to conflicts. Yet, most of the messages children receive about how they should settle disputes are far more subtle than those of Arnold Schwarzenegger films or Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles. ''The methods that parents use to work out problems with each other are the methods that children use to deal with their peers,'' said Alan E. Kazdin, a professor of psychology and the director of the child conduct clinic at Yale University.

That isn't to say that children who get into fistfights have parents who regularly duke it out. Rather, children learn general approaches to resolving conflict by watching their parents and other adults in their lives: How do you negotiate? When do you give in? How do you discern the other person's point of view? Can you afford to admit that you've been wrong?

''Many of the children I work with who are in trouble with the law or involved with gangs feel that they have no options for resolving conflict but fighting,'' Horne said. ''That lack of perceived choices is a sign of trouble.''

It's also compounded by the tremendous peer pressure to fight that's felt by older boys. To back down or to suggest a non-violent resolution to a dispute, especially if it is done in public, can be interpreted as a sign of weakness. To some children, losing face in front of friends can be more painful than the bruises of a fistfight.

''Any fight represents a failure of communication strategies,'' said Deborah Prothrow-Stith, an assistant dean at the Harvard University School of Public Health and author of Deadly Consequences: How Violence Is Destroying Our Teenage Population, and a Plan to Begin Solving the Problem (HarperCollins, $12). ''We need to teach children ways of defending themselves other than ignoring the problem or hitting the person bothering them.''

Child-development experts concede that it's unreasonable to expect children, especially boys in our culture, never to get into a fight with their peers. But there are patterns of frequency, timing and sex that make fighting a more serious problem for some children than for others.

''Girls are much less likely to get into fistfights than boys, so a girl who gets into a fight is more likely to have more serious emotional or social problems,'' Kazdin said.

Horne added: ''We teach girls social skills such as compromise and negotiation so that they don't have to fight. We don't teach those skills as well to young boys.''

Hitting someone is a primitive response to anger and frustration, so it's much more common among younger children who don't yet have the verbal and social skills to handle those situations in more sophisticated ways. That's why a single fight is less of a concern for preschoolers than for children in junior high or high school.

''I'd be especially concerned about a child who's aggression is impulsive,'' said Jan N. Hughes, a professor of educational psychology at Texas A&M University, who studies aggressive children. ''Also, I'd be more concerned when aggression is the way a child usually responds to frustration. These children see the world as hostile.''